Welcome to the Capitol Preservation Board Energy Savings and Sustainability on Capitol Hill. This blog will focus upon the elements required to help the Utah State Capitol become more energy efficient and sustainable for the upcoming 100 years.

Friday, July 31, 2009

The executive director has been working with DFCM and their energy office to investigate the possibilities of combining several small energy related items into one larger ESCO (Energy Services Company) delivery process.

What makes this delivery process unique? Under the ESCO delivery method the selected company would provide a proposal identify the energy projects that have a 5 to 10 year payback as well as the saving in energy associated with each project. The ESCO would then sign an agreement guaranteeing the saving and working with the CPB to obtain funding from a third party with the saving as the payment mechanism. Once the financing is arranged, the ESCO as a type of design Build Company would design the various projects and systems and then oversee as CM (construction manager) the construction. This is all done so the ESCO will at the end of construction guarantee the cost savings. The money then generated from the energy savings over the 5 to 10 year period would go to repay the debt within that same 5 to 10 year time frame.

One of the projects that is also being contemplated is the use of photovoltaic cells. Currently the executive director is reviewing options of where to locate the massive amounts of panels. Once decided then the ESCO will provide the analysis.

In addition to these energy project the CPB may elected to do some seismic work as well as some other work that is needed at this time to keep the State Office Building functioning.